


I Saw a Dark Storm

by Voidfish-Song (MroBeta)



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Character Study, Dark, Existential stuff, Gen, Kinda me giving a backstory to John, POV Second Person, because I want to know more about him, if there's anything I need to tag please lmk, spoilers for ep 63
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-12
Updated: 2017-11-12
Packaged: 2019-02-01 12:14:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12704793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MroBeta/pseuds/Voidfish-Song
Summary: The dark tale of the living plane known as the Hunger is a long one. One that spans over a century, one that starts with a simple revelation.Here is the story toldthrough the eyes of Johnthrough the eyes of the Hunger.(2nd person POV)





	1. 1.

**Author's Note:**

> Getting deep into the TAZ fandom after Balance has already ended and decided that there aren't enough things about John on here.
> 
> I just really want to know more about this guy. So I made up a backstory.
> 
> Enjoy.

You used to spend your days considering the nature of time and existence.

You used to be a lot of things. You were a human man. You were a philosopher. You were a motivational speaker. Sometimes you would play chess with people, and you were pretty damn good at it. You had friends, family, colleagues, and audiences. Your name was John, and people from around the world would come to hear your speeches.

You were a pretty big picture guy.

The world you lived in was fairly advanced technology-wise, but that didn’t diminish most people’s admiration of magic. Even you picked up a few tricks, usually from an old friend - she was often teaching herself and others new spells. Of course, they weren’t necessary for your speeches, but many said that it is useful to have some arcane knowledge. In this world, you lived in a smaller but bustling city, and would practice speaking to the local students, mostly philosophy majors.

The ever-debatable topics in philosophy were one reason why you spent so much time looking into subjects regarding the universe. Few of the larger questions were resolved, and you were one who tried to offer answers. Many listened, but rarely did your solutions feel right. You hadn’t really solved the largest mysteries of existence, not yet, but the audience was often still swayed by your speeches. You were practiced in public speaking, so often that wasn’t a surprise to you.

At a local restaurant one evening, there had been some discussion from your colleagues regarding a phenomenal discovery: a ball of tangible light called the ‘Light of Creation’ - a force able to create anything and further advance development, suspected to have created the whole universe at the start. You weren’t given the opportunity to see it, but you were intrigued by it. It was possible that it could supply the answers you, as well as many others, needed. However, it was still new, and some research had to be taken into it before anything could be done.

In the meantime, you kept searching for answers. Hoping one day to discover the true nature of time and existence itself.


	2. 2.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're getting deeper into it now.
> 
> Part of this chapter may have been me expressing my own thoughts on our existence (I guess I kinda empathise with John that way?) so sorry if it appears incoherent.
> 
> As always, enjoy.

When you were younger, you would often ask people what happens when you die. No answer you received was ever the same. And none of them would ever feel right to you.

Some would wax poetic about a heavenly kingdom, talking in detail about their God, one who would bring salvation. “He rewards those who are good by granting entrance to his glorious land,” they said, “It is a place where you never get hurt, or sick, where you can be reunited with lost loved ones and given eternal life in his paradise above.” The idea was initially appealing, but you were put off as they also spoke of a torturous place where every sin you had committed was punished for eternity. Often you would hear of these contrasting places in the same breath.

Then there was the concept of ‘reincarnation’. When your body died, your spirit would move on to another living being, spending the next lifetime in that before you moved on to the next and the cycle repeated. Endless cycling through the inhabitants of the planet, a never-ending loop as more inhabitants were born and dying in the seconds passing. Eternally moving through all life in the world wasn’t a simple concept, you found, when considering it.

Some would state that nothing happened. When you died, that was it; your consciousness would simply end. Some of the people who spoke of this were sympathetic, explaining that it was all the more reason to make the most of your living existence. The more cynical people would condemn both this life and the eternal oblivion that would follow. The concept of your consciousness just erased like that - thrown into a void with no feeling, no thought, no _anything_ \- you found that more plausible. Yet you never truly agreed with the idea of letting it all just stop there.

Throughout all of the explanations of the afterlife - and lack thereof - you found a recurring theme. _Eternity_. An eternal life in a kingdom beyond, endlessly cycling through living beings, forever drifting through a void - all of these abstract concepts appeared to be the only option following your death, nothing able to follow after (because if you were there _eternally_ , there _was_ no after.)

_How long is eternity?_

Long enough for a heavenly (or even a hellish) place to grow stale. Long enough for you to find yourself repeating the actions you had taken in previous lives. Long enough to lose any shred of yourself left in an inescapable darkness. You pondered the meaning of eternity for years, trying to understand how _anybody_ could stand bearing the mortal life and afterlife eternally. The more you considered this concept, the more maddening it became.

In doing so, you started to solve the unsolvable riddles that were conjured by people long before your time. You came to the conclusion that eternity was meaningless. Your existence was meaningless. The universe was infinite, but there weren’t any entities free from everything. No matter what happened to you, there was always something tying you down - that removed any meaning of eternity from the limitations it imposed against your will. You didn’t know whether you had already lived through the same life you were leading, and it was _terrifying_.

You cursed whatever divine creator had made the laws, because _how dare they force all mortal life through this_ , following the paths down to a finish line that, by its definition, _would never arrive_. How _dare_ they stand by as _everything_ had to endure this burden, letting _nothing_ know or escape the arc. Nobody before you was aware of the treacherous, _true_ meaning of existence. You knew, now, and you couldn’t _stand_ it.

You decided to let the world know. You stood in front of a large crowd of people, and you explained everything you had discovered. And, to your surprise, they listened. They all listened to your fury, your fear, your desire to become bigger than the ambivalent laws of the planes. Because if you could overcome the limits set in place, you wouldn’t be bound by them anymore.

You wanted, more than anything, to _exist_ \- beyond the end of your life, and outside of the empty eternity you would face otherwise.

This desire to live became more than just your own - soon it spread across the world, and people were asking the same questions and sharing the same anger at the invisible boundaries and bonds that locked you all in place. The only way to do that was to become bigger than the boundaries - an impossible feat, were it not for one thing.

The Light of Creation was brought out. By this point, you could start to feel the confusion and fury in the environment around you - the birds, the trees, the grass, _everything_ shared it. You were prepared to join the world in its goal, which could only be made possible by the Light, and watched as the sky started to turn an inky black and every living thing bonded together into one entity. Even with the entire world fused as one, you knew it wouldn’t be enough. The Light of Creation travelled, and if you followed, you would be able to do the same with whatever it came to.

When you found the meaning of eternity, you were afraid. You had been afraid before, but this was different. And at this point, you couldn’t be afraid. You were furious. Discontent. Dissatisfied. To the world, you were growing. ~~Ascending~~.

You let yourself fall back into the growing entropy as it enveloped the rest of the world and chased after the Light.

 

 

( _when you were younger, there was one thing you feared more than anything._ )

( ~~ _you didn’t want to die._~~ )

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know when this will update, but I will be trying my best.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed reading!


End file.
